The present invention relates to digital camera viewfinders and more particularly relates to a method of using a digital camera viewfinder to determine camera status indications in a variety of lighting conditions.
In modern day digital cameras, the viewing of the scene that will be captured is accomplished with either an optical viewfinder or a liquid crystal display (LCD) unit either alone or in combination with an optical viewfinder. In many cases, a light emitting device with a fixed intensity, is placed near the viewfinder eyepiece in order to provide the user of the camera with an indication of the status of the camera. In this regard, the light emitting device provides for example, indications such as xe2x80x9cthe camera is ready to take a picturexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cwait for the strobe to rechargexe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9clow battery warningxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cwaiting for the picture to processxe2x80x9d. In short then, such status indicator provide valuable information to the user of a camera to facilitate not only ease of use but also proper use of the camera.
While such status indicators help facilitate the ease of camera use, in many situations such indicators, depending upon ambient lighting conditions, are either too bright, making the scene viewed through the viewfinder difficult to see, or too dim, making it difficult for the user to determine camera status.
Therefore, it would be highly desirable to have a digital camera with a new and improved viewfinder status indicator that facilitates ease of camera use along with providing clearly readable status indications in a wide range of lighting conditions from poorly illuminated indoor settings to brightly illuminated outdoor settings.
A digital camera includes a viewfinder having a proximity sensor which is activated whenever a user looks through the viewfinder in preparation of viewing an object or framed scene. An illuminated status indicator mounted for viewing within the viewfinder for providing the user with camera status information is coupled to the proximity sensor through a microprocessor that controls the illumination level of the status indicator. The illumination level of the status indicator is controlled by the microprocessor in response to an auto-exposure algorithm that measures the brightness level of the object or framed scene that is being viewed by the user through the viewfinder.